Sammy Hagar’s New Circle Album Is About Global Greed

Sammy Hagar said the upcoming album with his band the Circle was about global greed.

The group features Chickenfoot colleague Michael Anthony along with Jason Bonham and Vic Johnson. Bonham recently hinted that the “concept kind of album” was “something very different” from the frontman’s previous output.

“I don’t have a name for it,” Hagar told Mercury News of the new album, which is still being worked on. “Right now, I am calling it ‘Hey Hey Hey.’ Because I say that in two songs – the first song and the last song. It’s about the world monetary system. It’s about crooks and it’s about good people, and it’s about the devil and it’s about God. It ends up it’s about greed. Greed makes people do weird stuff – it makes you hurt other people, take advantage of someone, it makes a war. It almost all has to do with greed.”

Hagar pointed out that "everyone thinks, ‘Hmm, money is the root of all evil.’ But, really, without greed, money is a beautiful thing – you can change the world, you can buy happiness, you can heal the sick, feed the poor, you can stop a war.”

The former Van Halen singer also talked about his creative process. “Every now and then, I think about the experience that brought me where I am as I am trying to create something new," he said. "Sometimes, I will go back and think of Eddie [Van Halen] and the way we wrote a song. I will think, ‘Oh, I remember how we wrote that song – Eddie came up with that thing.’ And then I get a vision that helps me write something. I will take the experience that I learned from Eddie.”

He described Chickenfoot guitarist Joe Satriani – who was in an adjacent studio while Hagar spoke – as “the most prolific guy I’ve ever wrote with. ... We could walk right in there right now and, if I could write lyrics fast enough, we could write a record, because he’d have the music in 20 minutes. It just pours out of him – original stuff, not rip-off [expletive]. He’s the most fluid guy I’ve ever worked with. Then I think about Ronnie [Montrose] – how we wrote. I do think about that. I think about how good these guys are. I’ve been really lucky to play with guys like that.”

Hagar became known as the Red Rocker because he used to always wear clothing with that color, but these days he rarely sports it. “I was into it, because of the energy of red,” he said. “I used to wear it to stand out. Because when you’re an opening act, you don’t get good lights. So, I would dress in red from head to toe, with a red guitar, and they’d hit me with one spotlight. And I was hitting the back of the arena.”